Adaptive routing in mesh-connected networks

It is shown that wormhole routing in mesh-connected networks can be deadlock free and adaptive without the addition of channels to the basic topology. Several partially adaptive routing algorithms for 2-D and 3-D meshes are described and simulated for a variety of conditions. Simulations of policies for selecting input channels show that transmitting extra information in the header flits can reduce communication latencies at high network throughputs. Simulations of policies for selecting output channels show that avoiding turns reduces latencies at high throughputs. Unrestricted nonminimal routing is found to reduce latencies slightly at low throughputs but increase latencies significantly at high throughputs. For nonuniform traffic patterns, a partially adaptive routing algorithm performs better than a nonadaptive one.<
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